The Ambivalent Revolution

by Stephen E. Lewis

Why did the Zapatista rebellion occur in Chiapas and not in some other state in southern Mexico where impoverished, marginalized indigenous peasants also suffer a legacy of exploitation and repression?
Stephen Lewis believes the answers can be found in the 1920s and 1930s. During those critical years, Mexico's most important state- and nation-building agent, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), struggled to introduce the reforms and institutions of the Mexican revolution in Chiapas. In 1934 the administration of president Lázaro Cárdenas endorsed "socialist" education, turning federal teachers into federal labor inspectors and promoters of agrarian reform. Teachers also attempted to "incorporate" indigenous populations and forge a more sober, "defanaticized" nationalist citizenry.

SEP activism won over most mestizo communities after 1935, but enraged local ranchers, planters, and politicians unwilling to abide by the federal blueprint. In the Maya highlands, federal education was a more categorical failure and Cardenista Indian policy had unintended, even sinister consequences. By 1940 Cardenismo and SEP populism were in full retreat, even as mestizo communities came to embrace the culture of schooling and identify with the Mexican nation.

Fifty years later, the delayed, incomplete, and corrupted nature of state- and nation-building in Chiapas prevented resolution of the state's most pressing problems. As Lewis concludes, the Zapatistas appropriated the federal government's discarded revolutionary nationalist discourse in 1994 and launched a rebellion that challenged the Mexican state to contemplate a plural, multi-ethnic nation.

Examines state and nation building as they occurred in Chiapas during and after the Mexican Revolution.

Genres: History

219 pages

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Summer Seeds · Rating 4 out of 5]

In January of 1994, rebellion broke out in the Southern Mexican state of Chiapas. An indigenous group calling themselves the Zapatistas - after the renowned hero Emiliano Zapata – attacked, following Mexico’s entrance into the North American Free Trade Agreement, condemning the “political corruption, local bossism and officially sanctioned violence” of the government and demanding social justice (Lewis xi). Despite the period immediately before the outbreak of the rebellion having been heavily studied, events of the twentieth century leading to the armed uprising remain unknown. In The Ambivalent Revolution, Stephen Lewis sets out to fill in the gaps by analyzing “Chiapas’s revolutionary and post-revolutionary experiences through the lens of the rural schoolhouse” (xii). In doing so, he argues that the 1921 Ministry of Public Education (SEP) became the federal government’s most crucial tool in regards to state and nation building. Not only did the SEP strive to improve education in rural Mexico, it was active in “combating alcoholism and religious ‘fanaticism’ and installing a sense of national identity” (xiii). Through the SEP, the national government sought to create a national identity based on “popular agency, class struggle, sobriety, patriotism, and secular thought” (xvii). Though, Lewis further argues that the government was never able to fully impose itself in Chiapas.

The SEP became essential in the federal government’s efforts to create a unified Mexican nation, especially in the rural state of Chiapas. Through socialist education programs that pushed for anti-alcoholism, anti-clericalism, and community building, the indigenista government sought to “modernize” the indigenous people of the highlands. However, poor government infrastructure in Chiapas caused most of the day by day responsibilities of the federal bureaucracy to be taken on by largely underqualified teachers. These teachers were often met with violent resistance from the local elite and indigenous community. In fact, many rural communities “considered the federal school an agent of cultural imposition” (120). Further creating challenges to the SEP were the geographic isolation of the highlands and the overwhelming ethnic diversity of the population, making attempts at unification difficult. In addition, a historic link between Chiapas and Guatemala continued to prove a problem to the Mexican government as they attempted to erase any link the state had with its neighboring country. Despite the challenges, the SEP did have some limited success. Lewis believes that that this partial success left an “ambivalent” legacy in Mexico. The SEP convinced those of the lowlands that schooling was an important vehicle of change, especially in the promise of land reform. In the highlands, the SEP set in place caciquismo – a system of political bossism – that is still seen today in many indigenous communities.

Lewis is thorough in much of his research. Documents from Mexico City’s Archivo General de la Nacion and The Ministry of Education of Mexico City archives are regularly cited and used to expand on the political history of the period. Such sources allow Lewis to achieve a comprehensive history of Chiapas before, during, and directly following the revolution. Extensive research elucidates the political, institutional, and social aspects which lead to and made the indigenous rebellion possible.

With a mix of sociology and anthropology, Lewis is able to analyze the impact of the federal education policies carried out by the SEP chronologically by region. This setup proved to be quite effective in supporting Lewis’ argument. The SEP had the most success in areas, such as Mariscal, where the teachers were able to successfully use the rural schoolhouse as a means to exact agriculture and labor reforms. In such locations, the school engaged the local residents in governmental policy and thus inculcated in them a sense of national identity. However, Lewis highlights the important difference that geography, economy, social factors, and ethnicity play in the success of the SEP’s programs. The outcome was not the same in Mexico’s central highlands. In fact, the SEP was rejected almost completely. Teachers, unable to speak the indigenous language of the community, were unable to communicate with their students. To make matters worse, they lacked basic classroom necessities such as textbooks, pencils, and paper. Instead of freeing the Indian population through education and modernization, federal reforms implemented through the school system proved to be more oppressive. Corruption of teachers and government officials coupled with poor infrastructure did much to undermine any possible good. In the highlands the SEP saw “little or no success in indigenous communities where ethnic, historical, and usually linguistic differences impeded mutual understanding” (92).

In the first chapter of the text, Lewis uses fewer primary documents to back up his arguments and instead borrows heavily from secondary sources. While the sources he uses are from credible authors, he loses some of the strength in his own argument. Also, the relationship between schooling and modernization of the political and economic spheres in Chiapas before the 1921 creation of the SEP is not adequately addressed. This is in comparison to later chapters, where Lewis goes into in-depth detail as he expands on and supports his arguments to an almost exhaustive degree. By using the rural schoolhouse as a focal point, Lewis masterfully conveys the chaos that was involved with attempts of state building and national unification in the three decade span of the text. However, he falls slightly short again in the conclusion. Lewis tries to take the history between 1910 and 1945 and use it to explain the armed rebellion of the Zapatistas in 1994. Despite obvious connections between the past and present events, the argument is lacking of any significant commentary or conclusions.

The Ambivalent Revolution is well researched and exceptionally informative. Despite the large timeframe of the text, Lewis provides a comprehensive yet detailed social history of Chiapas. Using the schoolhouse of rural Mexico as the central point of focus, the author describes the struggles associated with the SEP and the federal reforms implemented through it as well as addressing the issue of Mexican indigenismo during the time period. The inability of the government to successfully set up a functioning infrastructure for the SEP in the highlands coupled with the corruption of local elites caused the SEP to fail in its mission to modernize the indigenous peoples of Mexico and form a single national identity based on secular values. However, ideological battles and class struggle would play a significant role in shaping Mexico and would carry over, resulting in the 1994 Zapatistas rebellion. The Ambivalent Revolution becomes an important text in understanding the relationship between rural indigenous communities and the federal government between 1910 and 1945 and the role education policy and the SEP played in building the nation.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting topic, but very dryly delivered.